


i got your back

by icoulddothisallday, TetrodotoxinB



Series: MCU Kink Bingo 2017 [23]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bingo square: Nat x Steve, D/s AU, Dom!Nat, F/M, Pain, Sparring, Subspace, pressure points, sub!Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 07:50:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13162542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icoulddothisallday/pseuds/icoulddothisallday, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TetrodotoxinB/pseuds/TetrodotoxinB
Summary: Phil is gone and Steve needs to go down. Nat helps.Part of a greater D/s AU.





	i got your back

**Author's Note:**

> Beta’s by the delightfully pleasant TinyBearsWithJetPacks.

“Again, Steve. Don’t turn your back!” she shouts.

Steve turns quickly enough that Natasha still has trouble believing it even after all these months, but it doesn’t matter. She knows him and she makes her move without needing to think. The kick lands hard across his left cheek, and he staggers back, his hand on his face. 

“Ow,” he mutters, sounding surprised.

Natasha scoffs. He needs to stop assuming he’s invulnerable; he should be more careful. If they weren’t sparring for practice she would have gone for the kill. As it is, he’ll have one helluva bruise for the next few hours. 

She circles him again, and watches as he shifts his weight to his back foot ever so slightly. She’s ready when the lead leg comes up, and she rolls under it and out of the way. He’s off his game. He’s learned a lot, but he’s falling back into bad patterns.

Narrowing her eyes, she tells him, “You’re telegraphing again. Don’t set up. Decide to move and do it. Preparation wastes time and tells your opponent everything. I’m tired of repeating myself.”.

Steve sighs and drops his hands, stepping back to indicate that he wants out. “Nat, I’m tired okay?”

Natasha lifts an eyebrow. Steve _never_ complains of being tired. They’ve been in the field for 72 hours straight with no more than a couple of catnaps between them, and he’s trudged right on. Steve will work until he actually keels over, will say he’s fine when he’s bleeding out. 

She stares him down, packing her worry firmly away. Finally, he gives. His head tilts down and away, the most submission he ever lets himself show in public. Softly, he tells her, “Phil’s gone. It’s been almost a week.” 

Blinking, Natasha considers this. What was supposed to be a meeting with the Security Council has apparently turned into some kind of week long conference from hell, and Phil’s been tied up in it from the get go. Steve has been moping around the helicarrier ever since with no one to put him down. His status as a sub is classified and known only to herself, Clint, Phil, Hill, Fury, and select members of the STRIKE Team. Of them, even fewer people are aware of Steve’s DCI. God knows Steve’s too dense to go asking anyone to help him, but a week is too long for a -9 without going down. 

Natasha could offer to help. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s taken the edge off for Steve, though that’s generally when they’re in the field and there isn’t another choice. Carefully, she notes the slump to his shoulders and the way his hands are balled by his sides. She can’t give Steve what Phil can, but she can give him _something._

“Steve I don’t care how long it’s been since you went down. If we get called up, then we get called up. You have to fight — drop or no. Suck it up, and try again. You need the practice,” she reminds him.

Steve rolls the inside of his lower lip between his teeth and nods. He looks slightly pissed, but doesn’t say anything. He squares up and steps forward again.

“Good,” Nat says and watches as his pupils dilate by a fraction of a millimeter. 

They circle, and Steve manages to get the drop on her. He lunges from out of nowhere, landing a solid punch in the middle of her sternum. The breath rushes out of her, and she stumbles back from the force of the blow. Even so, Steve hesitates after the first strike, and what should have been a good opening for him to take her down, turns into Nat punching him in the side of the neck hard enough to trigger his vagus nerve and send him to the floor like a sack of potatoes. 

“Get up,” she orders. She knows he recovers faster than anyone else. Anyone would be staggering around like a drunk for a good half hour. Steve needs no such coddling, _especially_ not right now.

Steve shakes his head, and it’s taking him a little longer to get re-orientated than Natasha expected, but finally he’s up. 

She lunges.

Steve blocks, blocks, paries, side-steps, and then turns directly into a backfist when Natasha feints. In the second that his eyes are closed from the blow, she drops an elbow onto the space where his shoulder meets his neck. He shouts in pain and drops low to roll away, catching a knee to the stomach as he goes.

He comes up across the mat looking like an angry, wet cat, and Natasha can imagine exactly what he looked like at 95 pounds of righteous indignation in an alley in Brooklyn. 

“Again,” she demands.

He steps forward and immediately fails to block a side-kick to the kidney. 

“Focus. Check your emotions. Anger doesn’t belong in a fight,” she reminds him sternly.

They go again. Steve manages to block a series of blows and then land a counter of his own, before stepping out of her range. 

“Good. Good. Now, again.”

Steve’s eyes are focused now, but his pupils are wide. He steps up and they go again. And again. And again. And again. 

Nat’s seeing a pattern now. He’s focused, but it’s not on the fight. He’s focused on her, and he’s focused on the pain. Every time she hits him he goes down a little more, moves a little slower, take a little longer to recover after a hit. But she continues to order and offer praise, pulling him down farther and farther. 

She’s waiting while he staggers to his feet again. She can see it in the set of his shoulders and the way that his pupils have consumed his iris — he’s down.

“Drop,” she orders and Steve falls to his knees.

She walks around him, circling, watching. He can’t stay here like this. They’re in a public space and while no one is around, the chance of discovery remains. Still, Steve needs this. 

“You will stay still. You will be silent. If I tell you to stand, you will do so immediately and without argument. Do you understand?” 

“Yes, Natasha,” Steve murmurs.

She leans down and digs her thumb into the inside of Steve’s elbow. His eyes pinch tight and his breath comes out of his nose hard, but he stays still. Natasha lets up, and Steve sags from the relief, his breath coming ragged. Natasha pushes his knee with the toe of her boot, and he promptly straightens.

Immediately, she digs her thumb into the space between Steve’s jaw and skull, just under the tip of his ear lobe. He hisses, and she presses harder until he’s trembling from the effort of enduring. 

She lets off and moves on to the hollow of his throat, between his clavicles. And then to the junction of his nose and upper lip. The hollow point under the round bone on the inside of his ankle. The armpit. The inside of the knee. The webbing of his hand. 

Tears are forming at the corners of Steve’s eyes when Natasha stops. She knows it hurts. It would hurt anyone. But she’s long suspected that he feels _more_ than everyone else, that he _hurts_ more, and that this is enough to take him to his limits proves it.

She runs a soothing hand down Steve’s spine and then up his stomach. Her fingers run down his arms and then interlace with his fingers, squeezing gently. He grips back and a silent shudder wracks his frame. Slowly, she disentangles their hands and stands up.

“Good, Steve. I need you to stand now.”

Steve nods and immediately does as he’s told. 

Natasha nods. “Follow me.”

“Yes, Natasha,” he murmurs.

She gathers their gear and they walk out of the gym, Steve walking alongside her. It’s late enough that most of the corridors are empty on the helicarrier, though they still pass a few people on their way to his quarters. Most of them are auxiliary personnel, so if the brief nod they give Steve goes unacknowledged, it’s nothing too serious. 

Finally, they slip unnoticed into Steve’s quarters. 

“Go the bathroom. Strip. Shower. Put on your pajamas. Then, come back to me,” Natasha orders. 

“Yes, Natasha,” Steve murmurs again. 

Natasha watches as he goes to the bathroom and strips, without shutting the door. She shakes her head and files away for later that Steve needs _explicit_ instructions when he’s down. He takes an army-quick shower and then quickly towels off and makes his way, still naked, to his dresser to get his pajamas. He dresses just as efficiently, albeit without as much coordination as normal, and then turns to face Natasha.

“Good, now sit on the bed. I have a snack bar and bottle of water. You will eat the bar and drink the water, and then you will lie down on the bed, under the covers, and go to sleep. I will sit in the chair over there. If you need anything, you are to ask me. Understood?”

Steve nods a little more coherently and moves to sit on the bed. Natasha watches him, dimming the light when he lies down, until he’s deeply asleep, and then pulls out her phone.

_Had an emergency. Be back in the morning. -NR_

She sighs and puts her phone away. Her nights with Clint are precious but Steve’s needs have to outweigh her wants in this situation. She settles in the chair, getting as comfortable as she can be in the hard, institutional plastic chair.

Phil will be back tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> DCI: Dynamic Classification Index. This indicates how often a sub needs to drop or a dom needs to go up. Steve's DCI of -9 means that he needs to down every 48-72 hours.


End file.
